Thursday, April 17, 2014

‘Healing’ crusade poses serious health risk

By Lukoye Atwoli
Sunday Nation 13 April 2014

Kenyans are a highly religious people. This is borne out not
only by their open declarations of religious affiliation, but also by
their often overzealous demonstration of religious fervour whenever they
are called upon to do so. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. It
might even be a good thing, especially in circumstances when this
religious zeal is directed at activities aimed at improving the lot of
needy individuals or humanity at large.

Unfortunately, due to the
nature of religious belief, occasional tragedies occur. There are
multiple examples of this, and it is pointless to rehash them here. The
reason they occur is that the average religious person takes the message
from their holy book or their cleric literally. Many proclaim
that their clerics are messengers of their deity, and the holy book is
the unquestionable transcription of the deity’s words. Sometimes
the outcome of this blind obedience is serious harm and even death, but
even these are explained away as the doings of an inscrutable deity.

Over
the long Easter weekend, one such cleric will descend upon Eldoret with
the professed mission of spreading the message of repentance and
holiness. As has been the practice in previous crusades of a similar
nature, it is expected that many will ferry their sick relatives from
far and wide, and present them to this preacher who is also fabled to be
a faith healer.

ABANDONED MEDICATION

Those
of us taking care of thousands of Kenyans with chronic conditions will
be waiting for the inevitable outcomes with dread. We know many patients
who have already abandoned their medications and clinic follow-ups in
anticipation of healing at the crusade, and dozens more who will attend
the crusade and abandon their treatment.

We dread the reports we
shall get when we follow-up patients with chronic conditions like HIV,
cancer, diabetes and mental illnesses to their homes. We fear we will be
told some of them died after being convinced they were healed at the
crusade thus stopping their life-preserving treatments. We fear
we will find them at home, wasting away while believing fully that they
have either been healed, or that healing is on the way.

We dread
the events we shall continue to encounter in the clinics of the Moi
Teaching and Referral Hospital, weeks and months after the four-day
crusade. Many patients will show up in deplorable health and, when asked
what happened, they will say that they thought they had received
healing at the Easter crusade. Many more will suffer irreversible damage
due to chronic illness, and will return to the hospital only at the
urging of worried family members.

Why do we raise the red flag at
this point, before the crusade happens? Because we believe it is still
within the powers of the organisers of the crusade to do something about
it and ensure that no lives are lost, and no one goes home in worse
health.

The organisers and preachers should announce to their
faithful that nobody should stop taking their medication or stop
attending their regular clinics, in anticipation of healing. That
simple message will save dozens of lives, and ensure continuing good
health for countless others, which one would expect is a good thing for
the organisers of the crusade.

Dr Atwoli is a consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer at Moi University’s School of Medicine. lukoye@gmail.com